'I was paralysed. I put my hands down the front of my leathers and thought, 'Oh, God, my intestines are coming out They weren't; I was actually holding my privates'

It was those unique sights, sounds and smells of speedway that captivated David McAllan when he made his first visit to the Berwick Bandits' Shielfield Stadium at the age of seven to watch his uncle Kenny ride in a stars-of-the-future race. Thereafter, the sport would become McAllan's life. It would so very nearly also be the death of him.

In heat 13 of Glasgow Tigers' Premier League meeting against the Birmingham Brummies at Ashfield last October, McAllan was left paralysed from the waist down after being involved in a sickening pile-up on the fourth bend of the second lap. He learned to walk again and gets through life with the assistance of 22 various painkillers a day, plus a cocktail of other pills and potions to keep his bladder and bowels in a semblance of working order - not to mention the inconvenience of having to connect a regular round of catheters and bags - but, at 28, he will never ride a speedway bike again.

The grounded spaceman is happy to be alive, even if he is now reduced to being a spectator at the sport he so loved. "If I skip breakfast I do tend to rattle like a tube of Smarties but it could have been so much worse," he says cheerfully. "All I ever wanted to be was a speedway rider. I knew I was never going to be the world champion but after years of struggle - years when I couldn't find a team or when I was riding with injuries - 2007 had been my best season. I was starting to put a lot of good scores together and I was really enjoying it. But, hey, it was meant to be. I'm not a great philosopher but obviously fate decided there was something else in life instead of speedway out there for me. It's hard, it's very hard knowing I'll never go to the tapes again but it was terrific fun while it lasted"

Raised in Jim Clark's home town of Duns in the Borders, it was McAllan's uncle Kenny who encouraged the tot into the saddle. "He used to carve out an oval on Cockleburn Beach where he'd come down on his 500cc racing machine, his son - my cousin - Bruce, would be on his 125 and there I'd be, eight years of age on my wee 50cc red putt-putt. There could be up to 20 of us blasting round the sandy track having the times of our lives.

"My mum Fiona worked as a part-time cleaner in a hotel while dad Charlie was a farm labourer; he knew how to drive a tractor, he could plough, he could sow, he's probably Britain's best employee. He's always up in the morning, he's never late, he puts in his full shift, he's always available to work a few extra hours, and that's something he fortunately gave to me. We never had much money but I was always given my pound to go to the speedway. My auntie Christine, cousin Bruce and me would pile into uncle Kenny's wee Toyota with his bike and tool box on a trailer at the back - the nose pointed up at the moon like a rocket."

As their tiny offspring - he would grow to only 5'4" - became increasingly beguiled by uncle Kenny and his fellow daredevils, Charlie and Fiona McAllan bought a custom-made miniature speedway bike as a present for his ninth birthday. "It was identical to the machine world champion Hans Nielsen was riding but with smaller wheels and smaller frame powered by three 90cc engines. It was absolutely fantastic.

My dad stripped it all down and we painted it gold; today, to suggest painting a speedway bike would be criminal but when you're nine and you've just got a new toy"

(On the subject of height, McAllan stands a good four inches taller than Peter Craven, the "Wizard of Balance" who won the world championship in 1955 and 1962, the year before he was killed in a crash at Meadowbank aged 29. So it was not on the speedway track where no quarter is ever given or asked for that McAllan's lack of inches thwarted his ambitions. "Funnily, enough, I only remember it holding me back on holiday. We went to Great Yarmouth when I was 15 - at a time when I was riding a 500cc speedway bike with no brakes - and feeling crushed when I wasn't allowed to drive a 50cc go-kart because I wasn't deemed tall enough.") The nine-year-old McAllan took his new toy to the training track at Felton near Newcastle, a curious egg-shaped circuit where he gained renown as a young master of the art of hugging the white line on the inside of the bends. "I had a fascination with being able to turn really, really tight and crisp on that white line. Until the day I smacked a rock sticking out of the ground, head-butting the floor. I broke my nose, the blood flew everywhere but I never shed a tear. The only time I can recall crying in those days was when I caught my flesh in the zip of my fly."

From Felton to Shielfield, Powderhall, Linlithgow and Shawfield, where McAllan, now astride a full-sized bike, would appear in the second-half of the programme after league meetings; as "Wee Dave"entered his teens, he won popularity among speedway fans for his style and never-say-die attitude. "I was still a midget but I think they recognised I had a big heart. Aye, maybe too big. To me there is nothing as aesthetically pleasing to the eye as a newly-graded track. So one night at Shawfield - I was 14 - they'd just graded the track before my race and right from the tapes I was offski. From what I've been told, on the second lap I got a bit of a wobble and crashed in the corner. I knocked myself out and woke up in hospital four hours later. I came round with drips hanging out of me everywhere and gripping the bed because I was so out of it I thought I was up on the ceiling. My blood pressure had dropped to critical level but I was home the next day. The bike was too big for me, it was as simple as that, so my dad - and I still don't know what financial sacrifices my parents had to make all those years - got me a machine one inch shorter and lower."

When he graduated to the Premier League, McAllan made more appearances in ER departments than George Clooney. A cruciate ligament injury kept him out of action for over a year before he came a serious cropper in 2000 while riding for Stoke Potters on the Isle of Wight. "I was off gate one in my second ride when the Islanders' Adam Shields came tearing up on my inside. He didn't hit me but I got a fright and came off - Bang! On the ambulance journey to hospital I had a burning sensation all over my body so they whisked me straight into X-Ray. When the radiographer looked at the result and muttered, Oh, no...' I felt the fear of God. I had broken a vertebrae in my back and had to lie perfectly still for two weeks. It was pretty stressful but probably more so for my mum, and girlfriend (now wife) Lynn. Eventually, they put me on a ferry with a nurse to Portsmouth, ambulance to Gatwick then on to a BA flight to Edinburgh on a stretcher laid out across the back six seats."

McAllan would make a full recovery but his luck finally ran out in the race jacket of the Glasgow Tigers on October 14 last year when, having scored 10 points from his previous four rides (two wins and two second places), he came out for heat 13. Understandably, his recollection of the end of his career is hazy but those who witnessed the crash will never forget the horror which unfolded. "It was a double-header meeting against Birmingham with Stoke to come so there wasn't a lot of dirt on the track, making it very slick. I went up wide at the corner looking for better grip and the guy came underneath me. I felt the front wheel go and I went down..."

McAllan is far too decent a man to apportion blame but "the guy" in question - Birmingham's Phil Morris, who was due to "guest" for Stoke in the second fixture - was ejected not just from the re-run but from the entire meeting by the referee, a rare occurrence in speedway.

"I felt I was lying on the ground wrapped up in a Fairly Liquid bubble with the sounds of those around me coming like shock waves. I told the first person on the scene, I've broken my back.' I knew I was in a mess so the best thing I did was just switch off and let the medics deal with me. And the reason I'm walking today is down to them for their speed and expertise in those first moments. In the ambulance, I was drifting in and out of consciousness and it was as though someone was sitting on my legs they felt so heavy. When I finally came round in the A&E department of the Royal Infirmary, I had no feeling from the waist down; I was paralysed. I put my hands down the front of my leathers and thought, Oh, God, my intestines are coming out of my stomach.' They weren't; when I managed to look down I was actually holding my privates.

"On the trolley, every jolt sent waves of agonising pain down my back and I had the most incredible phantom pain in my right leg which I have to this day. Next morning I was in the operating theatre where they glued my broken vertebrae back together, drilled through the bones immediately above and below the break, and joined them all up with a metal plate. It took about seven hours and they did a fantastic job, absolutely fantastic."

Such was the skill of the surgeon and the physio that 16 days later McAllan was not only back on his feet - however feebly and painfully - but was declared fit to be discharged. "It began with the tiniest bit of movement in one toe - even though I still had no feeling - but inch by agonising inch, they got me up and walking with the aid of a zimmer frame, then crutches, then sticks."

By the beginning of November, McAllan was attending the out-patients' department where he told the physio that he intended walking unaided down the aisle on January 19, when he was to marry Lynn over the blacksmith's anvil in Gretna. "And I did, no crutches no brace. Yes, it's been a change of life but I'm looking forward not back. I concentrate on what I can achieve, not what I can't. I'm alive and I intend living life to the full."

David McAllan is walking proof that you do not need world titles to be a great champion.

The David McAllan Farewell benefit meeting featuring 16 stars from around the world will be held at Ashfield on Sunday Sept 7, tapes up 4pm. For further details visit www.davidmcallanracing.co.uk